On the Twitter Documents Controversy

I haven’t really written anything about the leaked/stolen Twitter documents (”Twittergate”) that were obtained by TechCrunch. But now that they’re being disclosed, there’s lots of interesting stuff in there about competitors, business model, product vision, potential revenues and other things.

• Danny Sullivan has written a post about the Twitter suggested users list; the Twitterati, the Twitter “Who’s Who”
• Matt McGee summarizes some of the internal competitive discussions about Google, Microsoft and Facebook (e.g., “how Facebook could kill us”)
• TechCrunch offers a wide ranging discussion of Twitter’s ambitions (”to be the pulse of the planet”) and exposes a bunch of the memos that Matt discusses in his post

This is all pretty embarrassing and awkward for Twitter but reveals the company as aggressive, disciplined and paranoid (to some degree).

Fascinating stuff for those who are interested to dig into it.

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Update: Danny’s post was independent of the disclosed internal Twitter docs, based on his own research he informs me.

Update 2: Todd Leiser points to a very good overview and summary of the Twitter docs at SAI.

Pennysaver’s Viral Campaign Boosts Print

Pennysaver, the print classifieds and coupons publisher, produced a parody of the MC Hammer “U can’t touch this” video (”Savertime“) to promote itself. It hopes the video will go viral and it’s also part of a contest the company is doing.

In addition Pennysaver is using Twitter and Facebook — and using Twitter to build its Facebook fans:

You may find the video corny, but I think it’s pretty effective and will go viral for the company. Some people will clearly like it if not everyone does.

Pennysaver has a site but is largely a traditional media/ads publisher. These viral/social media efforts are creative and, to some degree, help “sexify” the print publication and invigorate/reinvigorate the brand as a whole.

Social Media and Local Events

Dylan Fuller has an excellent case study reflecting how he and a colleague successfully used social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to promote a small UK beer festival. He discussed it in a comment but it’s worth highlighting and includes specific numbers and ROI metrics (click on image for slideshare presentation):

What’s a Facebook Fan Worth?

From the “proving social media’s value” session at SMX Advanced, Tarla Cummings of Location3 Media offered a case study featuring a hotel client that used Facebook, Twitter and mobile/SMS in its marketing. In discussing how one measures ROI of the various social media sites and tools she offered the following:

• Facebook fans were worth $6.20 each
• Twitter followers were each worth $8.49
• Mobile opt-in users were each valued at $32.05

Let me clarify that these were not abstract, absolute metrics but the calculation of what each “channel” delivered in the particular context of the campaign and related sales. I thought these data were very interesting to see.

Should Facebook ‘Just Buy Yelp’?

Matt Greitzer of Avenue A pens a provocative column (How to Solve Local Search, Once And For All) in which he argues that Facebook should buy Yelp:

Facebook should not build its own socially powered local search engine; it should just buy Yelp. This combination makes both companies better. It would instantly propel Facebook into the local search space with the backing of an active reviewer base and a proven service model. And Facebook’s scale would rocket Yelp from niche to mainstream, making a good service even better by combining reviewer opinions with vetting via the social graph.

There’s also this related piece from AdWeek on user behavior, advertising and social networks: Poll: Few Use Social Media to Guide Purchases:

Knowledge Networks polling released this week finds fewer than 5 percent of social-media users age 13-54 “regularly turn to these sites for guidance on purchase decisions” in a range of common product/service categories.

The figure is a lackluster 4 percent in the “travel or travel services” and “banks or financial services” categories, and a mere 3 percent when it comes to “clothes or shoes,” “eating out or restaurants” and “personal care products.” It’s lower still for “cell/mobile phones and services,” “cars or trucks” and “groceries or food” (each at 2 percent) and lowest of all for “prescription or OTC drugs” (1 percent).

Social networks are not “directional media” — they’re not search — at least they haven’t emerged as viable alternatives to search. Twitter is a bit of a different story there although we’re still in Act I.

I would argue that social networks are primarily a branding medium, though the survey above disputes that a bit. With better search integration they could also drive query volume and paid search revenues. But perhaps that ship has sailed. If so, there is still the potential to be a source of trusted (local) recommendations and to create an ad model around that. That’s what Greitzer is getting at in arguing that FB should just buy Yelp.

Facebook, despite its deal with Microsoft for search, has failed (so far) in capitalizing on the search opportunity I allude to. This search for “sushi” is a case in point:

Web:

Facebook results:

The irony is that Facebook began life as a local site (organized around schools in specific places), yet it really has no local strategy or really good SMB ad strategy from what I know. But it still could be a huge force in local. (It does feature a lot of localized apps.)

There’s a question in my mind whether FB could build an effective local search experience at this point. It’s possible in the abstract but might not be in practice. So Greitzer’s suggestion is interesting from that point of view. FB probably wouldn’t want to pay what Yelp’s investors would want. The company has received roughly $30 million in funding and I’m guessing would want at least $200 million. I’m also going to guess that FB wouldn’t want to pay that in cash; one could imagine a stock deal (a la Twitter) and a similar rejection from Yelp. There are cheaper companies in the local search/directory space that FB could potentially buy.

I can see the multi-faceted local opportunity at Facebook so clearly (I even articulated it in specific detail to someone at FB who’s gone now), yet I don’t think the company is going to buy Yelp or otherwise realize its local potential.

Who thinks I’m wrong?

eMarketer Underestimates Twitter Growth

Data aggregator eMarketer estimates that Twitter will have 18.1 million users by 2010.  According to Compete, Twitter currently has just over 14 million users in the US.

My belief is that number will be more than 50 million by the end of next year. I could be completely wrong. We’ll see.

Update: Twitter is very near 20 million visitors already.

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Related: Hitwise documents the “Oprah Effect” on Twitter visits. She’s now up to almost 500K users in about 5 days.

Online Reviews Influence 84% of Americans

There have been lots of studies documenting that consumers look at and care about online reviews in making buying decisions. The latest (released last week) comes from Opinion Research Corporation:

The survey revealed 84 percent of Americans say online customer evaluations have an influence on their decision to purchase a product or service, but only 28 percent of respondents say they have posted their own feedback on the web. These facts are nearly identical to those published in 2008 . . .

Two-thirds (66 percent) of respondents, virtually identical to the proportion in 2008, checked some type of online review forum when looking to purchase a particular brand of product or service. Interestingly, a sizable number of respondents (50 percent) relied on online reviews in the first stage of their buying cycle.

As the quote in the press release asserts, a minority of review writers are having a significant potential influence on buyers (whether online or offline). The Internet is being used even more intensively by cost conscious consumers to find the best products and services at the best prices:

Source: Opinion Research Corp.

Increased online activity in the food category probably relates the various e coli and other food safety scares in the past several months.

What’s the takeaway here? Businesses of any size must work with this population of influencers to manage their reputations online. If they can do that successfully (on social media and review sites) those efforts will likely pay off with the larger population. What I’m describing is challenging and may be more so for time-starved SMBs. But SMBs might also be in a better position in some respects to “work” social media sites to their advantage than large, slow-moving companies that resist engaging with customers.

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Thanks to Seb and Christer for pointing out this data via Twitter.

G5 Incorporates Facebook into Traffic Mix

Local search marketers are starting to branch out from conventional search/SEM traffic sources to other types of “inventory.” Display is one area that is gaining interest. So is social media — at least in the case of G5 Search Marketing. The company is adding social sites like Facebook and MySpace to those it targets in its customer campaigns.

From the press release that went out this morning:

G5 Search Marketing, Inc. – a leader in local search, advertising and measurement solutions – today announced the addition of social media to its Local Marketing Platform. With the rise of the “social” Internet, businesses have an opportunity to differentiate themselves from the competition. This new offering allows G5’s clients to advertise to local customers on social sites as well as interact with those customers to deliver a superior experience . . .

The way people find local information is changing. Currently, algorithmic relevance through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most important factor in finding a local company. However, as the Web moves to a more social setting, social relevance through channels such as Facebook and MySpace will play a key role in local search.

G5 has experimented successfully with Facebook Ads in the past for some of its storage-advertiser clients. I spoke to G5 CEO Dan Hobin last week and he said that this product (or extension of their product offering) was really coming out of demand from the advertisers. They were asking for ways to market on social sites, including Twitter apparently. The thing that Hobin told me however is that while they we’re interested in social media, many of the clients didn’t have any idea how to effectively set up a presence or make use of the tools on these sites. “There’s a lot of education that still has to happen,” said Hobin.

So what’s interesting here is that G5 is providing advertising tools for the ad units on sites like Facebook (i.e., Facebook ads) but it’s also providing a lot of that education that Hobin alluded to — almost a consulting sort of role. Indeed, in my opinion, the most effective marketing use of social media is not going to involve the ad units on these sites but rather the profile pages and related community tools.

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Related: The story is also covered in MediaPost.

Susan Boyle: What a Great (Internet) Story

This is just a great story (for the one or two out there who don’t already know it). It’s a story about defying expectations. It’s a story also about the power of the Internet.

Fueled by YouTube and Twitter, this woman (deservedly so) has gone, in less than 72 hours, from complete obscurity to global sensation:

SMB Ad Sellers: Twitter Time

I spoke to a local marketing company yesterday that told me its clients were asking for help with Facebook and Twitter — they didn’t know how to effectively use these sites, they just knew they wanted to use them.

There’s an emerging opportunity for new or existing players to build marketing tools around Twitter in particular, but also Facebook.

Start thinking about (and productizing) this now.

Will Facebook Become the Top Internet Site?

Metrics firm comScore released data on Facebook traffic and growth in Europe:

In the US women over 55 comprise the fastest growing demographic group on the site, according to this analysis. It would also appear that Facebook has surpassed MySpace in the US, although I’m not entirely sure that’s “official” at this point.

In terms of comScore’s top US Internet properties it would seem that Facebook still has a way to go to become the top destination:

Do you think that Facebook will eventually pass the portals and Google?

Google Promoting Latitude on Homepage

Google is promoting its (mobile) location-aware service Latitude on the homepage today: 

Reportedly, in its first week Latitude had a million signups/users.

Facebook Hits 200 Million Users

Facebook announced that it officially has 200 million users globally. According to comScore MySpace still has more users in the US (though Compete data disagree):

What does it mean for MySpace, which just announced MySpace Local, in partnership with Citysearch. Will both thrive or will FB dominate — one network to rule them all? And if both FB and MySpace manage to thrive, what about other networks? How will they do? Will they need to be organized around demographic groups or specific types of content to be viable?

Of course there’s now a “social layer” in almost all content or commerce sites online today.

FB is still missing out on the local opportunity in my view. Indeed, I articulated a local strategy in a lunch some time ago with Net Jacobsson, who has since apparently left the company.

At MySpace, former Yahoo! exec. Warren Kay is leading the advertising push into Local.

Twitter ‘Premium Accounts’ Fake

An article was published announcing “Twitter premium accounts.” It’s fake but it raises an interesting question: would you pay and if so how much?

I would pay about $20 per year I think.

Through this hoax Twitter also gets a bit of a focus group on these questions.

Facebook Connect for the iPhone

Yesterday (Saturday) at the SXSW event in Austin Facebook formally launched Facebook Connect for the iPhone. For those unfamiliar with Connect, which competes with OpenID, it allows you to use Facebook’s sign-in credentials rather than those of the particular site. It also integrates your activities on the third party site into your newsfeed. And your Facebook network may be integrated into the app to varying degrees. 

The rest of this post is at LMS.

Google Latitude: Location Sharing on Mobile

Google bought early mobile social networking service Dodgeball in 2005 and shuttered it in 2008. It also acquired the “Twitter-like” Jaiku in October of 2007. Google never really developed the Jaiku service and effectively jettisoned it, deciding to make the code open source for others to use and develop late last year.

The conventional wisdom (including mine) was that Google squandered an opportunity with these services — and especially — Dodgeball, which was well ahead of the mobile social networking curve that is now on the rise.

Well we might call the just-launched Google Latitude (part of a new version of Google Maps for Mobile) “son of Dodgeball,” although it’s more elegant and user friendly.

Steve Lee, Google’s product manager in charge of Latitude, told me that Latitude is not built on any of these prior acquisitions or technologies. But it is in a way a conceptual successor to those services. It also follows other, similar services from Loopt, Pelago/Whrrl and uLocate’s Buddy Beacon. There are some similarities to Yahoo Fire Eagle as well.

The rest of this post is at SEL.

MerchantCircle: SMB Social Net

MerchantCircle put out a press release this morning that asserts it has introduced most of its SMB members to social networking: 

MerchantCircle, the largest social network of local business owners in the nation, today announces a comprehensive study conducted by RapLeaf on a representative sample of MerchantCircle’s 650,000 members. The study shows that 62% of the local business owners using MerchantCircle have no other social networking profiles.  Among those members that were found to have a social networking account, 15.1% use MySpace, 14.3% use Facebook, and 12% use LinkedIn. The study also reveals the gender and ages of MerchantCircle members, with 86.3% older than the age of 26 and 54.2% older than 36 years old.

There’s more about the survey on the company’s blog.

LinkedIn, Marchex, Innovectra, Enormio!

There were a number of announcements over the past 24 hours that I haven’t been able to get to. Here are several from this morning in summary form:

Marchex this morning announced that it had added 23 premium publishers to the AdHere Network. Most of this isn’t about local but here and there are local ads and angles:

Marchex, a local search and advertising company, today announced that its Marchex Adhere for Publishers has added 23 new premium Web sites, bringing its roster to more than 200 premium publishers using Marchex Adhere to more effectively monetize their Web sites. The new Web sites include Inc.com, UPI.com, WirelessWeek.com, and NationalReview.com. In addition, Marchex renewed its agreements with The Motley Fool and The Globe and Mail, Canada’s number one newspaper Web site.

Innovectra announces a $2 million “venture loan:

Innovectra Corporation, a leading on-line, local advertising technology company, announced today the completion of a US$2.0 million venture loan from Toronto based MMV Financial. The Company provides Yellow Pages publishers with on-line advertising solutions and has recently launched its “ActivImpact” platform which provides Yellow Pages publishers with a dynamic, local search advertising platform that includes internet yellow pages ad packages, lead generation sites, online videos, dynamic e-coupons and search engine marketing to local businesses. Innovectra is privately held with investment from Edison Venture Fund and Longworth Partners.

Linked adds a bunch of apps to allow for collaboration among members (now it becomes more interesting):

 

And EU-based real estate site Properazzi has become Enormio! It’s a nice site but the new name calls to mind a comic-book super-villain: ENORMIO!

See coffee did help me

Facebook Finally Turns On Live Search

Microsoft Live Search was implemented formally today on Facebook. This is a big traffic pool and source of “inventory” for Microsoft. However, there’s no Microsoft branding there, so it will benefit the company in terms of reach and monetization but it won’t necessarily translate into brand recognition/growth for Live Search. 

Still it’s a big deal for Microsoft and an important add for Facebook, which had forced users to go outside the site to conduct Web searches — until now.

Friendster: Rising from the Undead

Friendster has raised new money ($20 million) and has nabbed a new CEO from Google. After a terrible fall in the US, Friendster had stayed with it and now is making a comeback with surprising momentum in Asia.

While it’s not even in the top 50 sites in the US according to comScore, it’s a powerhouse in the East and claims more users globally than Facebook and MySpace. While it’s unlikely to challenge in the US market or even in the EU, its an amazing comeback story.

Friendster became “damaged goods” in terms of its brand several years ago, creating the opening for MySpace. However the brand didn’t suffer in the same way or become stigmatized in markets outside the US.